Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

François Truffaut | Domicile Conjugal (Bed and Board)

In
Bed and Breakfast—which might have
been better translated as something like “The Married Couple’s House”—is the
fourth in the series of Trauffaut’s films featuring his loveable character
Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud). In this installment, Antoine has finally
married to a lover from the previous film, Stolen
Kisses, Christine (Claude Jade). If, as Roger Ebert suggested, we might
have expected him to grow up as a special and gifted figure, given his youthful
life on the streets, he is now one of the bourgeois, happily ensconced in
conjugal life and working at a job that is at least moving in the direction of
the artistic life he will eventually embrace—even if his artistry here is all
about pretense. Working for a nearby flower-seller, Antoine is kept busy dying
carnations red and blue, and attempting to discover new mixes and methods to
give customers the colors they desire.

He and Christine live in a noisy courtyard
apartment, with neighbors like a practicing opera tenor (Daniel Boulanger); another
neighbor who refuses to leave his apartment until Petain is dead and buried,
who calls down his messages to Antoine in a booming voice; to a nearby bar
maid, who is clearly desperate in her attempts to get Antoine into her bed.
Without a telephone, the couple must involve the local bar and their clientele
in their everyday communications, and they live, accordingly, in a world a
whistles, hoots, and shouts. Adding to this cacophony is Christine, who, being
closer to a true artist—a violinist—brings in money by teaching children how to
play, despite their mothers’ sometimes purposeful forgetfulness to pay.

In fact, one of the running gags of the
film—which unfortunately are far too preponderate—is how acquaintances
financially take advantage of the friendly couple, particularly of Antoine, by
asking for loans which they promise to, but obviously will never pay back.

Yet it hardly seems to trouble the couple
that who pacifically survive on very little: they dine with Christine’s loving
parents quite often, and when, at one point late in the film, they run out of
food, they dine of their baby’s supper, feeding each other like the children
they both still are, spoonfuls of mashed apples and other fruits. In short,
they get on the way many young couples do, taking joy in their own slightly
bohemian life while basking in the light of each other’s open love.

When Antoine’s flower-dyeing business
fails, he, through a series of accidental misunderstandings, is hired by an
American manufacturer who, evidently to represent his business interests to
clients, has created a toy ocean, replete with industrially-based harbors and
other portside constructions through which Antoine is asked, in his new
position, to maneuver toy cargo ships and other ocean-going vessels by remote
control. He is, after all, as the film signals, still a child at heart.

And while he truly loves Christine, he
not yet cured himself of his wandering eye, which catches the returned glance
of a Japanese tourist, Kyoko (Hiroko Berghauer) who visits his facility,
accidentally (?) dropping her bracelet into the miniature ocean which he
oversees. Fascinated by her, Antoine retrieves the bracelet and returns it to
her. Kyoko is as determined to get Antoine into bed as his neighborly bar maid,
and, acting out with geisha-like modesty—we get a glimpse of another version of her
personality as, dressed a leather skirt and open blouse, she tells her roommate,
in Japanese only, to get out so she can have the man to herself—plots to get Antoine
into bed.Before you can say “domo
arigato” she has succeeded. And soon after the birth of their child, Alphonse
(a name willfully changed from her desired choice by Antoine) Christine begins
to suspect as much—only to have the entire affair revealed as a bouquet of
flowers Kyoko has sent to Antoine, blooms, the small rolled messages she has
hidden within the closed blossoms, spilling out onto the dining table.

Furious with the turn of events, Christine
behaves not at all like an accommodating French housewife, but banishes her
husband from her bed—and ultimately from her daily life. Soon bored with his
mistress, Antoine would love to return, but Christine remains uncertain; and,
by film’s end, even if a temporary
reconcilement has appeared to have occurred, we know that the relationship can
longer last. Antoine has related to the gifted Christine as a sister, a lover,
and a mother, but forgotten that she would love to be simply his wife.